Son Heung-min hits landmark Premier League goal milestone against Brighton

Son Heung-min joined an elite list of just 34 players to have scored as many as 100 Premier League goals with a trademark scorcher against Brighton on Saturday afternoon.

Tottenham Hotspur’s South Korean superstar is enduring a dreadful campaign in front of goal compared to his own lofty standards. After finishing joint-top scorer of the division with 23 strikes last season, Son’s landmark effort was just his seventh in the top flight this term.

Son is averaging slightly more attempts at goal this season compared to his Golden Boot-winning campaign but his conversion rate has plummeted from a staggering 27% to 10%.

Tottenham’s fleet-footed number seven didn’t score in a Premier League start for Spurs until January – although, he did come off the bench to blast in a 13-minute hat-trick against Leicester City in September.

Two of that quick-fire treble against the Foxes were typically audacious long-range efforts. In place of clearer openings, Son has increasingly been lured into pulling the trigger from distance this season.

While his radar hasn’t been fully calibrated this term, Son emphatically found his range against Brighton within the opening ten minutes. Jinking into a fraction of space 20 yards from goal, Son stuffed a sumptuous, right-footed curler into the top corner to bring up his century against Brighton.

It was Son’s 18th Premier League goal from outside the box – the prolific forward has only netted 16 from within the confines of the six-yard area in England’s top flight.

Son’s father, Woong-jeong, was a former footballer in the South Korean lower leagues but directed his focus on ensuring that his son would reach a higher level. As well as making Son and his brother juggle the ball for four hours at time, Woong-jeong put a premium on ensuring that his children were equally talented with both feet.

Former Tottenham midfielder Rafael van der Vaart recognised the practice, once claiming: “I think he doesn’t even know if he’s right or left-footed.”

Son has marginally favoured his right foot when plundering his century of top-flight league goals, finding the net 55 times on his stronger side compared to 41 left-footed goals. Perhaps Son Woong-jeong should have devised some heading drills as his son has only found the net with his noggin on four occasions.

Nevertheless, Son is not only the first Asian to crack triple digits for Premier League goals, he is the only player from the continent to get more than 20.

There have not been many reasons for Son to cherish this particular season – from a personal or collective point of view given Tottenham’s struggles as a team – but this will forever be the campaign in which Son scrawled his name into the annals of Premier League history.